Issue No. 14, Autumn 2015

1.
2.
3.
4.
There is no overcoming this.
Everything owns a god and I
Know why the spine saunters
Into a hook in chapel. On some
Days, there is a faith worth
Catching by the teeth and my
Dear Lord, I can see the bite
Marks that you have gathered.
I pray that your wounds are a
Hall full of horns, staining the
Glass windows of your body
With its dark, sweet music.
There is an anthem born in
The blood, a parade of codas
decoding the religion in breathing.
Offer me the earth, if not you,
Jazz. Offer me the grave, if not
You.

Nkosi Nkululeko, poet and pianist, hailing from Harlem, NY, has performed his works at venues such as The Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Senegalese-American Bilingual School, Lincoln Center and many others. He is a 2015 American Voices Award nominee and a Callaloo Fellow. Nkosi has been published in the Junior Scholars’ Schomburg Review (Volume 10, No. 1, 2012), and in the forthcoming issue of No Token and the 2015 anthology for great weather for MEDIA Press. Nkosi hopes to translate his human experience through text and sound.